Minorities Within the Majority: Intra-Muslim marginality and the Unequal Distribution of Religious Citizenship in Indonesia

Abstract

Studies of religious minorities in Muslim-majority societies have largely focused on Muslim-non-Muslim relations, leaving intra-Muslim inequality and its effects on citizenship less clearly explained. This article examined how intra-Muslim marginality produced unequal religious citizenship among Ahmadi communities and Shia residents displaced from Sampang between 2008 and 2025. It used qualitative document analysis of regulations, court decisions, official statements, human rights reports, monitoring reports, and peer-reviewed studies. The findings showed that doctrinal classifications acquired civic consequences when public institutions enforced, accepted, or failed to overcome them. Ahmadi marginality operated more directly through written rules, mosque closure, and institutional decisions limiting public activity. In Sampang, marginality developed through locally organised religious opposition, prolonged displacement, and failure to secure return after violence. These routes did not remove formal citizenship, but made the use or restoration of rights less secure. The article developed orthodoxy-conditioned citizenship to describe legal membership that remained intact while religious rights became harder to use or recover because institutions gave practical force to dominant interpretations of Islam. Local variation showed that these outcomes depended on institutional choices rather than doctrine alone.